Hermit Thrush

[Bill Dix]

D90, 80-400 VR @ 400mm; ISO 800, 1/640s @ f/5.6; matrix metering, 0EV; Aperture priority; HH

Here's one from last June that I hadn't posted before, from Mt. Desert Island, ME. A pair of thrushes was preoccupied with gathering food for a nearby brood and weren't as skittish as usual. I cropped to vertical and about 25% off height. I've learned a lot from BPN since June, and this is softer than I might have wished and I might have stopped down a tad. C&C welcome.

[Gail Spitler]

Hi Bill - congrats on getting a Hermit Thrush in the open with such a lovely bg. I think there is a bit of room on the histogram (RGB) to move the white point a bit. And you might want to sharpen the bird just a titch more. The main thing that is distracting to me is the eye shine; I am tempted to clone all 4 streaks and create a round glint somewhere in the same location.
I wish that Hermit's didn't have smudgy edges to their breast, it can cast aspersions on the sharpness of the whole image. Seriously maybe it means that the rest of the bird really has to be sharp?

Cheers
Gail

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Very nice Bill with lovely BG. The eye looks nice and sharp. Good technique for HH, if it were mine I would crop just a touch off the top.

[Alfred Forns]

I like it Bill !! dof on those is usually minimal Sometimes when they look a bit more to the side the image appears sharper .. not much you can do there !!!

Excellent suggestions and one fine image !!!

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Bill,
A nice capture on this little guy...agree with Gail on the eye. your color rendition and feather details are good...looking forward to your next one...:cool:

[Lance Peters]

Techs covered above.
Like it - Bg compliments the bird nicely.
Good show :)

[Desmond Chan]

Good looking image nonetheless !

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Like it, maybe a tad off the top and the eye looks a bit too sharp, just a tad - overall well done Bill.

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all. I agree about a bit of crop from the top, and with Gail's observation about the eye. I might try to somehow consolidate the fragmented catchlights. The histogram looks about right to me in PS Elements. Jeff, I concur that the eye looks oversharpened. I find that once I have sharpened to my satisfaction on my computer, I lose something in the BPN upload, so I need to oversharpen the web-sized jpeg on my machine for it to look right on BPN. I think I overdid the eye just a tad. I think the softness in the rest of the bird is primarily a dof issue which might have been improved if I had stopped down a notch. I appreciate all of the helpful comments.

[William Malacarne]

What I usually do is my selective sharpen during regular processing. Then after downsizing for web I will do a global sharpening as the very last step.

Bill

[Bill Dix]

Thanks Bill. I'll give that a try next time. I've been doing some selective sharpening at the end. Often it works OK, but here I think I overdid the eye.